Lower fuel costs, predictable fuel prices and green jobs are the main factors that make the straight economic case for investing massive amounts of money in new clean power facilities. Now a new report suggests that health care costs are an equally if not more important factor than the other three. Using New York renewable energy as a case study for eliminating fossil fuels in favor of building new clean energy facilities, a research team … Read More

The Efficiency Resource Fund's partners aim to bridge the financing gap for small- and medium-sized businesses looking to make energy efficiency improvements. Doing so could yield significant reductions in US carbon emissions and generate lots of green jobs, as well as returns for investors.

Here are some more cleantech and climate policy stories we wouldn’t want you all to miss: Clean Energy First Solar Becomes Desertec Investor Clean Power Finance Partners Comprise Up To 80 Percent Of Major U.S. Residential Solar Companies Helping Schools Finance Solar Webinar: How Racking And Mounting Make Perfect Cents (And Dollars, Too) Up To Half Of RES Investment Could Come From Institutional Investors Where Innovation Advocates Go Wrong New Website Offshore-Windenergie.net Provides Information On … Read More

Global solar photovoltaic (PV) demand is set to advance by two gigawatts (GW) to 31GW in 2013 compared to the previous year, thanks in part to firm Chinese demand, a new report suggests. NPD Solarbuzz projects that world PV consumption will rise by 7% on a year over year basis, with China overtaking Germany for the top spot in PV demand. The report also said 83% of the world's PV demand will come from the … Read More

The carbon tax debate continues in the US Congress as sponsors and stakeholders assert carbon-pricing legislation would address the most challenging, and interrelated, problems facing the US today. Amounting to a tax on carbon emissions, the discussion draft's sponsors are soliciting public feedback on how best to allocate proceeds.

Weekly transatlantic flights powered entirely by old-cooking-oil-derived biofuels will soon be offered by the Dutch airline KLM. This is an important milestone in the growing market for “greener” forms of air travel. The option is now there, for those who travel between New York and Amsterdam regularly, to significantly cut down on the carbon emissions that their travel causes. The new fuel will be provided by the aviation biofuel specialist SkyNRG. The project has received … Read More

Reposted from RenewEconomy: Australia has experienced its own version of the "solar revolution" in the past two years, when some 2,000 megawatts (MW) of rooftop solar PV were added to households – mostly as the result of generous feed-in tariffs and other incentives. The fact that many of these tariffs have now been removed suggests a cooling-off in the solar market. But the costs of solar PV modules has fallen so far that the industry … Read More

This article was originally published on Climate Progress. Last month, I was on a panel with someone who kept kept saying "current renewables" were inadequate to address the climate problem and what we needed to do is invest in "future renewables." By that he meant increased research and development, of course, and not continued aggressive deployment. I began my comments with this metaphor: "There's no useful intellectual distinction between 'current' and 'future' renewables. It's like saying … Read More

Reposted from Worldwatch Institute’s Revolt blog: Along the western border of Rwanda, an innovative energy project on Africa's 2,700 square kilometer Lake Kivu is generating electricity in a region beset by both geochemical and geopolitical instability. Lake Kivu is one of the world's three known "exploding lakes," presenting a threat as well as an opportunity for local communities. Volcanic and bacterial activity in the lake generates substantial methane deposits that, if untapped, could erupt violently … Read More

Reposted from RenewEconomy: The Australian solar PV market could tip the 10,000 mewagatt (10 gigawatt) mark as early as 2017, and could reach the "saturation" levels for owner-occupied houses in many areas in coming years, according to a new report. The five-year forecast prepared by leading market analysts Sunwiz and Solar Business Services says that the Australian solar PV market – currently at 2.5GW – will likely grow to between 6GW and 10GW by 2017. … Read More

The Energy Department on March 8 announced more than $50 million in funding for new projects that will accelerate the development of advanced plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) technologies to improve vehicle fuel economy and performance. This new funding supports the Energy Department’s EV Everywhere Grand Challenge, which aims to make PEVs as affordable to own and operate as today’s gasoline-powered vehicles within the next 10 years and will help to advance the technology goals outlined in … Read More

This is hilarious. No extra comment at the moment. Maybe I’ll chime in down in the comments section. h/t Climate Progress Gas Prices On The Rise? (Conan Video) was originally published on: CleanTechnica. To read more from CleanTechnica, join over 30,000 others and subscribe to our free RSS feed, follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or just visit our homepage.

Reposted from Arctic Sea Ice Forum (with minor edits): At this point in time, pump-up hydro is our cheapest way to store electricity. Pump water up with spare electricity, let it flow back through turbines when we need electricity. We’ve got over 20 GW of pump-up hydro in the US that we installed back when we were building nuclear reactors. There’s no way to turn them off when we don’t need the power, so we built … Read More

Here’s a great video from Mr. Energy Czar. He gives a nice intro on EV sales and the transition from gasoline-powered cars to EVs, and then he features an excellent interview with Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Renault and Nissan. One of the most interesting comments, I thought, was the emphasis that the $6,000 price cut for the U.S. Nissan Leaf comes from the establishment of the new U.S. factory (which cuts wage, transport, and currency … Read More